Kulintang: Indonesia musical instrument

The kulintang is a modern name given to an ancient music instrumental form that is composed on a row of small, horizontally-laid gongs that operate melodically, accompanied by larger, suspended pair of gongs and drums. As part of the lager gong-chime tradition of the Southeast Asia, the music ensembles have been playing for several years in the regions of the Eastern Malay Archipelago – the Southern Philippines, Timor Eastern Indonesia, Eastern Malaysia and Brunei.

source of picture: en.wikipedia.org

Technically, the kulintang is the Maguindanao, Ternate and Timor name for the idiophone of metal gong kettles that are laid horizontally upon a rack to manufacture an entire set of the musical instrument. The musical instrument is played by striking the bosses of the gong with the wooden beaters. Because of the use of this musical instrument across a wide many groups and languages, the instrument is also known as kolintang by the Maranao and those in Sulawesi call the instrument kulintangan, those in Sabah and Sulu Archipelago call the musical instrument gulintangan and the musical instrument is called totobuang by those in the central Maluku.

By the 20^th century, the name of the musical instrument had also come to mean an entire ensemble of 5 to 6 musical instruments. Traditionally, the Maguidanao nam fot the entire grouo is basalen or Palabunibunyan, palabunibunyan means, a group of loud musical instrument or music-making.

The musical instrument that is called kulintang is made up of a set of 5 to 9 mature pot gong that are horizontally laid upon a frame arranged in order of pitch, having the lowest gong found on the left side of the player. The gongs are laid in the instrument face side up on top of two strings that are running parallel to the entire length of the instrument’s frame, with wooden sticks resting perpendicular across the frame of the instrument producing an entire set of the kulintang known as pasangan.

The gongs can weigh approximately from 2 to 3 pounds and 1/8 pounds and have dimension form about six to ten inches for their diameter and about 3 to 5 inches for the height of the musical instrument. Traditionally the gongs are manufactured from bronze but because of the shortage of bronze after the World War II, and the subsequent use of scrap metal, brass version of the musical instrument with decaying tones have been in use.

The musical instrument is played by striking the cosses of the gong with the use of two wooden beaters. When playing the musical instrument, the maguindanao and Maranao would commonly sit on chair while for the suluk and some other groups that who play the musical instrument, they commonly would sit on the floor while plating the musical instrument. The modern ways of the playing the musical instrument include twirling the beaters, juggling the beaters, altering the arrangement of the gongs either before or while playing the instrument, crossing hands while playing the instrument or adding very rapid fire strokes all in an attempt to show off the grace and virtuosity of the player.

The gongs are manufactured with the use of cire perdue style; a lost-wax process is used for the casting of the individual gongs.

Unlike the westernized musical instrumentation, there is no set tuning for this musical instrument sets in the Philippines. Big differences exist between each of the instrument sets because of the differences in the make, the size and shape alloy that is used in the production of the musical instrument giving each kulintang set a distinctive pitch level, tone quality and intervals. Even though the tuning of this musical instrument differs much, there is some uniformity to contour when same melody heard on various versions of the instruments. This common contour leads to the analogous interval relationship of more or less equidistance steps between each of the musical instruments.

The musical instrument is traditionally said to be a musical instrument for women by several groups: the Maguindanao, Maranao, Tausug/Suluk, Samal, Badjao/Sama, Iranun, Kadazan, Murut, Bidayuh and Iban. The playing of this musical instrument was traditionally linked with graceful, slow, frail and relaxed movement that displayed stylishness and decorum mutual among the women. Presently, with both men and women playing the musical instrument, the instrument seen strictly as the instruments of women has waned and in fact, the well-known players of the musical instrument today is men.

The main aim of playing this music in the community is to work as a social entertainment at a non-professional, folk level performance. The music of this instrument is distinctive in that it is said to be a public music in the sense that everybody is permitted to be part of it. Not just the players of the instrument playing the instrument, but also the audience are allowed to participate.

The music is not allowed to be played in the mosque and during the Islamic rites like fasting month, Ramadhan, where the players of the musical instrument are permitted only at night during the time when people are allowed to eat. During the death mourning of an important individual, the instrument is not allowed to be played also, during funeral and during the peak times of planting and harvest season.

The musical instrument is used as an accompaniment musical instrument to healing ceremonies and animistic religious ceremonies. Though these practices has somewhat died out among the people. The music from this musical instrument can be used for communicating long distance messages from one village to another or from one longhouse to another.

The kulintang music was also important in relation to courtship because of the very nature of the Islamic tradition that did not permit for unmarried men and women to intermingle.